Thursday, March 30, 2006

MIT grad defies odds to live the good life

I love these stories about immigrants and the troubles they went through to come and to succeed here. DP

By LEAH RAE, THE JOURNAL NEWS

The Journal News : John Tsai was able to come to the United States from China after being uprooted twice — and then against narrow odds.

In 1938, when he was 12, his family fled from China to Malaysia as refugees during the Japanese occupation. His father, a school principal, remained behind. The family returned to China in 1946, after the Japanese surrender.

Three years later, amid the rise of the Communists, Tsai went to Taiwan to take a college entrance exam.

"I left my hometown one week, the Communists took over. I was on my own," he said.

Tsai studied at the Chinese Naval College of Technology in Taiwan, where the Nationalists remained in power, and majored in naval architecture. In 1959, he won entrance to the elite Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His wife, Anne, and their first son, Albert, joined him in 1962.

Be sure to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.

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